


I Will Follow You into the Dark

by AceQueenKing



Category: Suikoden III
Genre: Affect of a True Rune/Immortality on a Marriage, Age Difference, Chris Lightfellow has the True Water Rune, F/M, Thoughts on mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 04:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20886254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Salome is getting older, and Chris isn't.





	I Will Follow You into the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sleeperservice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeperservice/gifts).

"I thought you'd be here," Chris says, strolling into the command tent. It's easy to tell: all the lanterns are lit, which only Salome bothers with. It's new behavior, and troubling; Chris noticed it during the fourth Tinto campaign, when he went from wearing his glasses at night to needing every lantern in the camp lit just to make out the plans. He is there again now, straining to see the plans sitting in front of him.

"Just going over things again," he says, as Chris wordlessly slides in at his side. They are alone, and that affords Chris the rare privilege of stroking her husband's palm.

His water rune flutters against her hand and she smiles; he's always had it, had it longer than she's had her own rune. It's part of how she knew, so long ago, that they'd be good together. _Elementally aligned_, he'd muttered under his breath after she'd kissed him and found it sweet, and she knew it as an essential truth. She leans into him and tries hard not to notice the muscle he's lost in his arms. He does his best to distract her, kissing her with a soft and tender peck on the cheek.

"You're lucky Tinto hasn't seen your fires burning. Miners see well in the dark." That was part of the trouble with Tinto; they fought like hell, and close quarters and nighttime raids bothered them little. She'd hoped that after Lily replaced old Gustav, Tinto would make less territory grabs, but Lily, if anything, was overly bold. They'd had two scuffles with her father in twenty years; this would be three with Lily in less than two.

And the constant wars were putting stress in places they shouldn't be. Like her marriage.

"So do Zexen," he mutters, stubborn. "They'll start nothing we aren't prepared for already."

"Mm." She leans her head against his shoulder. There was no way to convince him otherwise once he got into this sort of mood, his stratagem doldrums. "Are the plans you drew up yesterday still your liking?"

"Not to my liking at all." He shrugs his shoulders. "But as good as we can get without the Council massively expanding our military budget."

"Then come to bed," she says, tugging his hand with her hand - water rune to water rune, one flowing from the other. "At least let me give you some tea."

He looks uncomfortable—as he always does—with the thought of going into their tent together, at the same time. In the third campaign against Tinto, when they'd been newly-weds, and he still had that bowl cut, and Chris' lack of aging had been nothing but mere whispers, he'd been _scandalized_ at the thought of their relationship becoming common knowledge. He'd insisted on neither of them taking the name of the other on the field, him still a Harras and her a Lightfellow; of them having at least an hour between them before withdrawing into their tents, to prevent the other Knights from thinking that anything untoward was going on. That had been then.

He takes her hand now. Without protest, even.

Chris knows that he is willing to live with it because they are running out of time. Chris ignores that and focuses on the warmth of his hand as she glides him to their tent; slow and steady.

"Shall I make the tea?" He asks; at the beginning of their courtship, she often let him. He was better at it, and admittedly using a True Rune to boil a pot of water seemed a bit much, even to her. She shakes her head this time, however; magic is a limited quantity, and if he's hurt on the field, she wants him to have as many options to heal himself as he can.

"Let me spoil you." She's quiet and he's quiet as she touches the fire rune on her left hand to their pot and opens the right palm bearing her water rune over it, keeping the flames low to try to avoid light alerting Tinto to their positions. She still has lit the tent well enough to see his face: silver-haired and gaunt, new withered wrinkles and rocky crags in his face. He is getting older. He was always older, and just gets older still.

And she isn't. And she won't.

"Thank you," he says, his voice hoary, and she knows it is not just the kindness in preparing the tea. He is getting past the age where he can keep following her onto the battlefield, no matter how much she wants him to always be at her side.

"We need to talk about you retiring," she says as she pulls the sachets of tea out, lets each cup steep. She waits a silent and chilly moment before glancing for his reaction, and she finds his shoulders instantly jut upwards, his jaw tight and his eyes resolute.

"No, Chris." He mutters. He takes the tea. He does not sip at it.

"You—" she glances away, hates how hard this conversation is. "I can't have you getting hurt."

"I could be hurt in Zexen." He delicately blows on the tea and reaches out his hand for hers and holds it. From the cup, it is warm. "I could have fallen down the stairs at St. Loa's, or tripped into the sea, or any other sort of horrible death. But it would not be my choosing; if I die here, if I die while doing my best to protect you..." His hand squeezes. "It will be a good death. A worthy death."

"I'm not planning on you dying any time soon," she lies, and hates that she is lying. She wishes she could be like the Fire Champion, like her father; leave the rune and leave the Knights and run away with Salome.

But they are both too duty-bound for that.

And her father and the Fire Champion both learned, of course, that any bird of trouble left wandering would come home to roost sooner or later. A rune's sealing would force her to pay a horrible cost, for she knows the Zexen Merchant's Council well enough to know that they will not have any problems if the person who bears this rune after her does so to commit atrocities—so long as they are in Zexen's name. Chris, who already feels the Karaya village's destruction heavy on her shoulders, even thirty years later, cannot handle the weight of another atrocity. And Salome, she thinks, can't handle her being in the hands of a strategist any less diligent than himself. Duty-bound, both of them, and sad of it.

But neither of them would be happy any other way.

Salome takes a long swig of his tea; she wonders if he is thinking the same heavy thoughts as she is. She mimes his actions, concentrating on the tea, hoping chit-chat about the tea will lead to less weighty subjects.

"Liar," he says, and drapes his arm around her shoulders. She kisses his neck in well-practiced routine, a smile on her face.

"Optimist," she says, though it is not true. The ghost of his smile touches her nape, and she memorizes every sense of it: the bristle of his chin, gone too long between shaves in the war offensive, where time and razor alike are a luxury.

He sips at his tea, a quiet moment in a world of too much noise; she can hear the world outside, the bugs chirping, the boots of Zexen soldiers watching, the threat of far-away Tinto miners marching ever closer.

"What time I have," he murmurs, his lips a ghost at her ear. "Is yours, Captain. If I am so much a footnote in your legend..." He kisses her cheek, warm and sweet and beautiful in all the right ways. "Then I have lived well."

"And I will endeavor to spend the time you have entrusted to me well," she says; his hand brushes away the doubts in her mind as he lowers her tea down onto their little field table. "And you will be far more than a mere footnote. What story we make, we make together."

"F-flatterer," he replies, a bashful stutter to his voice. "Let's go to bed, wife. I am not so old yet to be beyond salvaging."

And she knows what he wants is not sleep. "To bedroll," she says, a smile on her cheek. It will not be comfortable in such tight quarters, but it will be comforting, a heady balm on her anxious soul.

One day they will have sorrows, but may that day be not today, she prays, to any of the Horned Deities who may receive her prayers. Not today.


End file.
